Although Grizz put up a confident facade, after exiting the tavern and walking forwards for a bit, he motioned over to Orou and, turning the corner to enter an alleyway, took off running. After making several complicated turns and making sure no one else was following them, he let out a sigh of relief. Finding an abandoned spot in an alleyway, he pulled out the scroll for Orou to look at as he started saying to him: “My poor heart is going to stop if I have to make another deal like that. He and the twenty seven other men that were sitting in the tavern were fully prepared to kill me for the ledger. You did a great job by intimidating them.”

Grizz continued babbling, but the only thing that was on Orou’s mind was the scroll before him. As Grizz unrolled the scroll, what appeared before Orou was a drawing of a massive rune. Although it was more complicated than the several runes that Orou had seen and drawn on the circle formation, Orou didn’t see what was special about the drawing before him. It was a strange rune, starting from a single point in the middle were several unsymmetrical lines, each very different in length and thickness, forming a very strange letter K. What was interesting about the formation was the location of the spirits. One needed to look very hard in order to actually find that there were several spirits, tiny dots over the black ink that was used to draw it. There was absolutely nothing to link the spirits together, nor was there a line of spirits going from one point to another and Orou could think of several ways to interpret the drawing in front of him.

“This was not the main concern of the trade deal, but I should have checked it before accepting. Is the scroll fine or did they trick us?” Grizz squatted down next to Orou as he examined the scroll, but after several seconds of investigating, he gave up on looking at it and instead turned his head to Orou, expecting a response. Orou hesitantly flickered his tongue, still unsure of whether or not the rune could actually be formed by spirits. Although Grizz likely noticed Orou’s uncertainty, he didn’t pay it any mind as he put the scroll back in his backpack, saying that he would let Orou inspect it when they returned back to their shop.

Following that, the two of them slowly gravitated towards the more populated areas of the city and for the first time today, Orou noticed that there was a strange mood hanging around the few people that they met along the way. Grizz was just as observant as Orou, so pulling over one of the beastmen that was walking at a quick pace, he asked what was happening. The beastman he pulled over was unwilling to answer, and so were the rest of the people Grizz asked. Eventually, as they were nearing the centre of the town, one of the beastmen who saw what they were doing approached Grizz.

“People are in a hurry to get where they have to be and not spend a single second more on the streets. Soldiers are patrolling the streets and apprehending those that speak out or even worse, “seem suspicious.” Who knows how many beastmen have been taken away by the soldiers, probably numbering a few hundred at least.” The ferret-like beastman nervously said to Grizz and he nearly jumped when he saw two soldiers, armed with sharp swords and dressed in black armor with stripes of red running down the sides of the armor. The two soldiers were dragging behind them a screaming beastmen, who was doing his best to writhe free of the soldier’s grip.

“Down with the injustice, down with the king! There’s corruption on the streets and corruption within the palace that needs to be removed. Free the people, free our emotions!” Even as the man was getting dragged along the street, he was continuing to protest, perhaps trying to spread a message. The beastmen around them had scattered to both sides and were looking at all of this with fearful eyes, doing their best to not get between the soldiers and whatever they were doing.

Only now did Orou notice a small boy that was desperately running behind the soldiers, tears and snot flying everywhere. “What did my papa do wrong? Please, let him go, don’t take him away,” the distressed calls of the boy were ignored by the soldiers up until he reached his father. One of the soldiers stopped dragging the beastman and, looking at the boy, calmly explained to him: “Your papa is a rebel, that is, a criminal. The revolutionaries have raided and pillaged, killing countless innocent beastmen along the way for their so-called cause, and your papa is supporting those kinds of people. My own papa was killed by those scum, who think they’re doing us a great favor.”

Hatred was evident in the soldier’s eyes as he stared at the beastman who was shouting various profanities at the soldiers. Of course, the child before the soldier didn’t understand what he meant and, using his little hands to punch against the soldier’s armor, continued crying. One of the more compassionate beastmen ran over and picked the child up in her arms, turning him away from the soldiers and his father, calming him as best as she could. Grizz looked at the scene in front of him with sad eyes, his expression clearly down. With a sigh, he turned to Orou, saying to him: “There are two sides to every story and every war.”

Slowly but surely, the street returned back to the way it was before, though Orou could see several people in the same predicament as Grizz, unsure what to think of. Grizz quickly got over his sentiment and resumed heading to where he wanted to go in the first place. He didn’t speak a single word of the earlier matter as he continued chit-chatting with Orou, only emphasizing that he needed to be more prepared for what was to come.

Over the rest of the day, Grizz visited several shops and black markets in order to search for what he wanted. He acquired several poisons, venoms and powders, as well as some strange stuff that Grizz said he needed for ‘disguise.’ Orou didn’t pay much attention to what Grizz was buying, but instead, he paid attention to the people walking around him. As was said earlier, he saw an influx of soldiers and guards patrolling the streets, making sure that everything was in order. Throughout the day, he saw several more cases of beastmen getting dragged away, and even a case of execution. Apparently, one of the citizens got violent with the soldiers and what came after was to be expected.

Not only common citizens were shaking in fear, but the various thieves that dealt in illegal substances were also nowhere to be found according to Grizz. One of the beastmen that Grizz dealt with told him that the soldiers were making use of the situation and had already taken several thieves, accusing them of supporting the rebels. The beastman said that this was all an elaborate scheme that was set up by the king to get rid of the various illegal activities in the city, though Grizz doubted whether or not the king was smart enough to do that.

The two of them made their way back to the shop they were residing in. Grizz rummaged in his backpack and after taking out the two sacks of crystals, he threw the ancient scroll over for Orou to catch and read on his own time. Grizz kept grumbling about having plenty to do today, but that didn’t stop him from emptying the sacks and counting how many crystals there were. Orou used his tail to wrap around the scroll and with great difficulty, he managed to get it unrolled and displayed in front of him. Carefully memorising the strange rune illustrated on the scroll, Orou began using his will to manipulate the spirits, trying to figure out the secret behind this spell.